How can I import page structure XML backups?

Birgit Matuolis

Hello Atlassian community,

We are maintaining our product documentation in an internal Confluence installation (Server version). From time to time, we need to also update the same documentation on a completely different, external customer portal consisting of Jira Service Desk and Confluence (as knowledge base with limited spaces). This was done by a colleague who quit last year and now I'm supposed to do it.

I know how I can export only certain pages or page trees as XML from our internal Confluence installation. But how can I then reimport the XML export (not a whole space, just certain pages) to the Jira Service Desk/Confluence Knowledge Base?

In the Knowledge Base space, do I use the "Content" -> "Import" function, which looks for text files on the Knowledge base server and converts them to Confluence pages? Does that mean I have to unzip the XML export directly on the Knowledge Base server and then use that directory as base directory for the import?

Or is there another way I don't know about?

As far as I know, the "Backup & Restore" function can only be used to import whole Confluence spaces, right? Does that overwrite any other existing content in the "target system" (i.e. our knowledge base)? Cause that would not work, as we have unique content in the knowledge base which cannot be overwritten.

Help is much appreciated.

Dave Theodore [Coyote Creek Consulting]

The two options you are referring to are probably not what you want.  The "Backup & Restore" method will update the entire instance and make it a copy of your internal Confluence.  The "Space Import" will make the individual Space an exact copy of what is in your internal Confluence.

Probably the most elegant way to do this is with Comala Workflows and their Remote Publishing App. You can set up a workflow that can used to manage an approval process.  In that process, you can set up the option to publish to the JSD Confluence instance. The Remote Publishing App manages the creation of new pages or updating of existing pages for you automagically.  We've implemented this for a number of clients and it works really well in this use case.